Tuesday, 8 December 2015

Continuing my odyssey of beer
exploration,this week I try to embrace the joys of Christmas…

generic stouty beer pic

Each year I notice Aldi
gets in special Christmas themed beers, and last year I bought one because it
would count towards my distinct beers challenge. Generally though, I found
the way the beer industry tries to tailor itself to different holidays or
events… a bit annoying. Especially Christmas though. In the same way that the
media seems to think the only music you want to listen to at Christmas are 20
Christmas themed hits from the past and things that involve chimes, jingling
sounds and choirs of children, and restaurants think that you want turkey and
things with cranberry sauce, the alcoholic drinks industry seems to think you
want irish cream (which, frankly, you do), gluhwein
(which, should be banned), port (likewise), eggnog (which, excuse me North America, is minging) and beer that
tastes a bit spicy because that represents the flavour of Christmas pudding.

Look, can we have a
rule here? If you don’t want it at any point during the rest of the year, you
can’t have it at Christmas because, clearly it ain’t so special. Here are a few
examples to illustrate this.

Mince pies. I like
mince pies, but you can only get them at Christmas. Why? I’ll tell you why:
would you buy them at any other time of the year? No, because there’s only so
many you can eat, and you eat both of those at Cristmas. So we don’t need em.

Turkey. Look, turkey’s
just a massive, dry, tasteless chicken. I get that you tend to have more people
to feed at Christmas so you need something bigger, but can I suggest goose
instead?

Christmas pudding.
What is this even for? Let’s pour a shitload
of brandy on to a cake and set it on fire! Howabout, let’s drink the brandy
and get a cake in that peple actually like? And if you like fire: cigars.

Gluhwein. Hot
alcoholic cordial. Are you shitting me?

Band Aid. I just
don’t know how I feel about this anymore, except I have an instinctive aversion
to it.

Walnuts in shells.
Why do people want to crack their own nuts at Christmas?

Christmas trees.
Taking up space, presenting a fire hazard.

Works dos.
I’ve covered these in an earlier post, and I can’t remember what I said about
them. I might’ve been trying to be positive that day, but it’s more llkely I
was sarcastic and disparaging. So I’m just going to say, if no one wants to go
out with everyone they work with on a
regular basis, it’s inhumane to make them
do it in a shit bar or restaurant where a number of the previously
mentioned examples are likely to be present and a bunch of other works are on dos at the same time.

TV Christmas
specials. I know you can’t show Christmas specials at any other time of the
year, but really: they’re all the same. Maybe if I was a kid, wall to wall
Christmas themed TV would ramp up my excitement even further, but I’m not. I’m
an adult. I don’t need to see popular chat show hosts and comedy characters
dressed as Father Christmas. I don’t need to know anything about elves (unless
it stars the delightful Will Ferrell), angels (unless it’s It’s a Wonderful Life), reindeer, or ghosts of Christmas past,
present or twatting future. You get me?

Which brings me
back… to Christmas themed beer. I would normally avoid these like anything with
Piers Morgan in it (unless it was Piers Morgan being dunked repeatedly in a
bowl of shit), but as I said, the distinct beers challenge (coupled with the
arrival of Christmas) convinced me to just try all the Christmas beers. In the
same way that I decided to read one of Piers Morgan’s books just to confirm how
much of a bellend he is, I decided to try all the Christmas themed beers I
could find to confirm it’s pointless. Let’s see shall we, what they’re like and
whether there are any thematic similarities?

As I got started on
this, it actually turned out that there weren’t actually that many Christmas themed beers, though I did come across a lot of
things that were termed Winter Ales.
I decided to look up what this was, and found that it tends to refer to things
like stouts and porters because they often aren’t available in summer. It may
be true that they aren’t always available in the summer, but as we’ll see, a
lot of the winter ales I came across weren’t actually stouts or porters. Similarly,
I don’t see all that much that can be deemed wintry about some of these ales. But nevertheless, a-delvin’ we
will go. [it turns out that plenty of stouts and porters are available in the
summer months. A look at the bottles available at Urmston’s Prairie SchoonerTap House on the 5th of June revealed there were no less than 10
porters or stouts in stock. It also turns out that the existence of winter ales stems more from the kind of
beers that could be brewed in winter
– you know, like in the old days – rather than any thematic intentions.]

I bought the rest of
the Christmas themed ales that were available from Aldi and a few that I could
find in Tesco. Asda didn’t have any Christmas
themed beers at all, which I found very odd. I did pick up some winter ales in
Sainsburys, and elsewhere, I tried to buy Christmassy or winter ales whenever I
went to the pub – which is quite a lot in December for the various band
Christmas dos, golf Christmas dos, work Christmas dos…

First was Wychwood’s
Bah Humbug which has 5 ABVs
(though the website claims there are only 4.3) and features a cartoon impression
of Scrooge on the label in the inimitable Wychwood goblin style. I’m quite a
big fan of the Hobgoblin – probably their most famous product – and I can see
I’ve given Bah Humbug with its spicy fruit flavours 3 stars. That’s not bad –
in fact I have to admit I rather enjoyed it.

I see Wychwood
actually do a whole host of seasonal ales – one for each month. I don’t know
whether to be moderately impressed or incredibly annoyed about that. I’ll
decide later. It is later; I have decided now that I like it, as it means there
are more distinct beers to look out for.

Next was St Peter’s Christmas Ale, which
comes in a snazzy flask with a label that depicts a typical cottagey British
winter scene. It’s a hearty 7% and is described as smooth, fruity and
full-bodied; the perfect companion for Christmas savouries, sweets and snacks. I scored it an average 3 out of 5.

I see St Peter’s
also have a slightly extended range of seasonal beers, including a winter one
and they all come in that impossibly cool flask.

Jenning’s Redbreast
contains four and a half ABVs
and rather than showing a lady’s sunburnt bosom on the label, comes adorned
with the slightly more predictable image of a robin in a hat and scarf,
whistling out a few notes. This is Jenning’s’ December release, the January one
being Cockle Warmer, which I expect
I’ll get to shortly. I scored the Redbreast another average 3.

On entering Yule Love It! Into Untappd, I was
surprised to find three other beers going by that name. That suggests a dearth
of imagination, doesn’t it? Nevetheless, this one is by Thwaites Brewery and clocks up a stilted 4% ABV. It is described
simply as an amber Christmas ale and I can’t really add anything to that, other
than that I actually scored this an extra half a star on the others, making it
the best so far. You might take that with a pinch of salt though, as other
Untappd members thought it had a generic hoppy taste with a hint of water or
that it was tasteless. I thought the hoppyness was actually an improvement on
the blandness of all the other Christmas themed ales I’d tried so far. As for a hint of water… all beers contain that
– usually up to around 95%.

Hardys &
Hansons Rocking Rudolph notches
4.2 ABVs and is part of Greene King’s
seasonal ale range. A cartoon reindeer with an Elvis wig and a guitar
(hilarious), potentially bursting out of a snowglobe decorates this one… and
it’s back down to 3 stars because extra points are not awarded for the number
of components an image possesses.

Old Miserable Git, another by Thwaites is the second beer in
our list to reference those of us who might have a slightly grumpier reaction
to Christmas. That doesn’t mean I appreciate it anymore than the others – in
fact, I don’t. It’s another 3 stars. It’s 4.1% and is presented with a cartoon
image of a cigar chewing grouch.

Christmas Plum
Pudding from JW Lees is quite different. It’s 4.8%
and described by the brewer as “Christmas in a glass”. It sure is fruity and
smooth and I have to say a little odd tasting. It went down quite easily though
(as in fact did all the pints I had on the evening I consumed this one), and I
was enjoying it by the end. I only gave it a 3 though.

With Sainsburys Taste The Difference Celebration
Ale by Black Sheep (6% ABV), the supermarket giant has adopted branding
that belies its own brand identity.
In fact, through a set of uninteresting circumstances I came into possession of
two more Taste the Difference offerings
in the form of the equally well branded American
Pale Ale and Tap Room IPA(both by
Genesee Brewing Company). I’m not sure how I feel about this since I tend to
avoid own brands wherever possible (unless I’m in the market for cheap
spirits), but you’ve got to give them credit for sourcing these products from
reputable brewers. That they make no secret of who the brewer is encourages one
to buy, but also to feel cheated when one realises one has paid full price for
a supermarket own brand… of sorts – which wouldn’t be a problem if the products
were any good, but these aren’t. While I should only be concerning myself with
the product that is described as “a rich, dark winter warmer” on its label,
it’s worth mentioning that I scored all three a derisory 2 stars out of 5. The
American Pale Ale in particular I remember recoiling in horror at a weak and
toiletty aftertaste.

Conclusions

Out of all of the
beers listed above, only the Celebration
Ale proclaimed itself a stout or porter (stout, to be precise). I did drink one
or two of that ilk over the period, but they weren’t labelled Christmas or Winter ale, so I don’t think you can count them.

What have we learned
then? Well, you can correct me if I’m wrong, but from what I can see, as long
as it is an ale and not a lager, there’s nothing to stop something from being classed
as a winter or Christmas-themed ale. As long as you can convince people it is
rich, spicy or warming and you stick a wintry scene on the label or call it a
comical wintry name, you’re all right. If you want a more informative,
fact-laden account than I can [be bothered to] give you, try this link.
The thing is, despite the traditional origins of winter ale and the seasonal
nature of what is called Winter Ale,
it seems to me that you can buy similar products all year round – these days at
least. Now that I’ve done my initial research, I suppose it’s time to put that
to the test – at least it will be when it ain’t winter no’ mo’. [I can confirm
that I did manage to buy a winter ale in July, Dunham Massey’s Winter Warmer, though I don’t remember
where I got it from.]

As ever, I’m learning as I go along, and hopefully you’re
having a nice time and can say you’re learning with me. Sure, you could go to
someone who already knows all about it, but how much fun would that be?
Exactly. No fun at all.

This then, marks my
last post of the year. I hope you’ve had fun joining me on my various
adventures. I’ll be back in the new year as ever, returning with a run down of
my favourite three spirits from 2015. In the meantime, if you need something to
read, I’m sure there are plenty of backposts you haven’t read. I promise
though, that there will be plenty more to read about in the new year. Till
then, have a great Christmas.

Tuesday, 1 December 2015

sorry that these are just photos of a computer screen, but I don't know what I'm doing

Thursday 12 November
2015 was to be the final night of competition in the year long Distinct Beers Challenge,which you
could have been following on Twitter at #DistinctBeersChallenge. I had one beer
left in my fridge after the pub crawl, and had that on the Sunday during dinner
preparation. That had left me just 2 beers behind the leader, Pablo. His
prodigious distinct beer drinking had left him on the verge of a well-deserved
victory, but I wasn’t just going to stand by make it easy. I waited until
Wednesday lunchtime at work, and nipped down the local Lidl to see if they had
anything in, coming away with four very reasonably priced distinct beers.

One had been a
gamble – Hatherwood’s Golden Goose was definitely in a different bottle, but
was it the same beer? When I was able to check, (I could get no data
connectivity in Lidl itself), I found that this new bottling was no. 4, so it was indeed a distinct beer.
Curiously though, on searching the app again, that beer has mysteriously
disappeared from the app. I’ve raised query with them, so it will be
interesting to see what happens. Back to the story.

I resolved to drink
two beers that evening, see where things were after that, and visit the nearby
big Asda the following lunchtime to stock up on ammo for one last assault.

As I kept an eye on
the app that evening, I saw that Pablo was having a beer too. With Mrs Cake’s
encouragement, I decided to have three instead of two, just in case. I would be
looking after our little girl on my own on the Thursday, so it might be
difficult to keep opening and pouring beers while simultaneously trying to
entertain, feed, change and console a wriggling, mewling 16 week old, should
the contest go right down to the wire.

Incidentally, that
third happened to be Mrs Cake’s Samuel Smith Imperial Stout that she’d been
saving. I opened it by accident, mistaking it for one of mine, and therefore
preserving 2 of my Lidl stash for the next evening.

Thursday came and I
saw that Pablo had snuck another beer under the radar on the previous night.
That left me one behind going into the final evening. It all depended on what
Pablo and I would do.

I proceeded with my
plan. The trip to Asda proved fruitful; I found the only four beers I hadn’t
had before and looked forward to striding to victory.

I launched into it
as soon as I got home with a Praga Premium Pils from Lidl, pausing just to
greet the family and pull over-excited faces at our little girl, then left a
small gap until after dinner before continuing with Bishops Finger. I couldn’t
really believe I hadn’t logged that one before, but obviously it had slipped
through the net as it isn’t really of a style I’d seek out generally.

I saw that Pablo
hadn’t logged anything yet, so I took another break while I tried to feed our
offspring. Mrs Cake’s plans had been cancelled anyway, so there were no
impediments to doing what was necessary – unless Pablo absolutely caned it and
I hadn’t got enough beers in.

Next up was Warka,
and finally Goose Island Honker’s Ale. That left me two beers ahead, with two
hours until midnight and two beers in the fridge, in reserve. Pablo still
hadn’t registered anything. I kept checking, and was going to wait right up to
the moments before midnight, just in case Pablo was using sneaky tactics – such
as drinking but not logging until the last moment, so that I wouldn’t be able
to match him. I didn’t really think Pablo would be as sneaky as that though.

Then I started
thinking, what if Pablo thought the
competition ended last night? I’m
going to have to check as I don’t want to declare myself the winner and turn
out to be mistaken… or give anyone any excuses…

I scrolled down my
Facebook timeline to a year ago when the challenge had first been issued and
read that the deadline would be 2317 on 12 November 2015. That would mean the
competition would be over 43 minutes sooner than I had thought. So I started to worry that I might have told
people during the pub crawl that the deadline was midnight. Ultimately of
course, the date stated in the original post would be law, but I didn’t want
any controversy or cause for dissent.

23:17 came and went
and I was tired, so I decided not to wait up until midnight, figuring the two
beer lead was probably enough. It was; I checked first thing when I woke up the
following morning. First job at work that day would be to complete the graph,
announce the news and do a little bit of analysis.

who actually drank the most distinct beers in the year?

I would just like to point out that, even though I won the overall challenge by not letting anyone exceed my distinct beers total, both Pablo and Dave actually drank more distinct beers than me during the year - Dave just by 8, but Pablo by an impressive... 20, 30, 40...56. Overall though, I still had two more beers than Pablo.

Now it was over, it all seemed a bit
of an anti-climax, though I also felt a gaping hole in my life. What would we
do now, without an all-consuming, alcohol-fueled competition? Well, let’s just
cool our boots a little bit there. I’m sure we’ll think of something, and
there’s a lot of analysis to do first.

What have we learned?

Let’s do this bullet
point style, like it’s a presentation.

Lidl beers

There are loads of different beer brands and styles, but it is still
very difficult (and expensive) to keep finding new ones. In spite of that,
I’ve found a new enthusiasm, if not appreciation for beer, and that is a
good thing – as proven by how I was almost as excited to receive 6 beers
from my sister as an early Christmas present this year as I would have
been to receive a bottle of whisky.

Garden centres and stately homes are good places to find unsual local
craft ales.

Some beers specify that they be stored upright for a reason.

Lidl is also a good place to pick up distinct beers– they seem to
rotate stock quite often and cover a few varieties. Even if the range
isn’t particularly wide, it is cheap.

If you’re going to try as many beers as possible, you’d better be
prepared to splash some cash. And get around a bit.

Most beer is pretty average but if you like beer, that’s ok.

It is ok to ignore recommended serving temperatures. Just have it
all cold.

Have a strategy for recording beers if you have no data connectivity
– such as using the note function on your phone. Be aware though,
that there are often numerous beers with the same name so you’ll need to note
the brewery and sometimes other details to be sure you’re getting the
right one.

garden centre beers

In all honesty, I’m
struggling to think of anything else we’ve learned. Let’s reduce this to
quantitative data, and see if that tells us anything.

I drank 372 distinct
beers between 23:17 on 12 November 2014 and the same time on 12 November 2015.
372 beers from 28 different countries, and from every continent except
Antarctica, comprising 83 different styles –as recognised by Untappd.

graph showing frequency of scores attained by beers

As you might know,
you have the chance to score each beer out of 5, so I’ve plotted the various
scores on a graph. As you can see, an average 3 out of 5 is the most popular
rating, while ‘above average’ scores of 3.5 and 4 out of five were more common
than ‘below average’ 2 or 2.5 out of 5. That pretty much goes to prove that, in
general, beer is ok, but, slightly better than that, I like beer more than I
don’t like it.

What do the stats tell me about which kinds
of beer I like?

If you’d asked me
what kinds of beers I like before, I would have listed IPAs, wheat beers and
red ales primarily. My least favourite would probably be bitter, fruit beers
and winter ales. I have a post on winter ales coming up (hopefully next week),
but in the mean time, let’s take a look at the data on those aforementioned
kinds of ales and see if we can conclude anything.

IPA

I recorded 6
distinct IPA styles and 57 different IPAs in all. That means 15% of the
distinct beers I drank were IPAs. On average they do seem to score better than
beer in general – IPAs scoring an average of 3.34 out of 5 against the all beer
average of 3.14. There are still some distinctly uninspiring examples among
IPAs though – RtwoDtwo’s Steam Hopper IPA scored only 1, while no one scored
full marks. There were more 4.5s than usual though.

Red Ales

I didn’t generally
come across as many of these as I would have liked – only 11 in total. They
scored pretty well, RtwoDtwo’s Best Red being
the exception with 2 out of 5, while everyone else scored between 3 and 4.
There were no scores above 4.

Wibiers

Only 8 of my beers
were wheat beers, and again that reflects a lack of availability, as I would
have chosen it more often, given the opportunity. Once again, the scores were
good, but not great.

Bitters

Bitter was well
represented, and again, that was because of availability, rather than any
desire on my part to drink bitter. There are just so many pubs in the UK where
if you want something you haven’t tried before, it’s going to be bitter. The
same goes for a lot of the stock in supermarkets. I drank 37 different bitters
and on average they scored a pretty low 2.92 – nothing scoring more than 4 out
of 5.

Fruit beers

I managed to
deliberately avoid these for the most part, clocking up only one, JW Lees and
Co’s Christmas Plum Pudding. I think you’ll be reading a little more about that
one next week. In general I don’t see the point in fruit beers… manly and girly
at the same time… it’s just confusing. Like ladyboys.

Winter ales

This genre was a
little better represented because of research I was doing for a post (coming
next week) about winter and Christmas themed ales. Again, my general dislike
(hoping I’m not ruining next week’s post too much) came out with only one of
the 11 beers scoring 4 out of 5 (take a bow, Tweed Brewing Co’s Winter Tweed).

Winners and Losers

Aside from me (who
was the winner) and everyone else (who lost), there is the question of which
beers (and breweries) deserve the overall praise or derision. Let’s start with
the breweries.

As you can imagine,
I came to seek out certain breweries over the course of the year, so some have
a better chance of being represented here than others. Worthy of particular
praise are Thornbridge, Cloudwater, Staffordshire Brewery and Badger Ales. Some
of these had lower scoring beers as well as high, but I hardly think they can
be held responsible for my personal tastes with regard to styles.

In that spirit, I’m
not going to dwell on the breweries whose wares I sampled only once or twice,
since it is as likely that I tried varieties that weren’t to my personal taste,
as much as that it was bad beer.

In terms of
individual beers then, scoring 4.5 out of 5 and worthy of great praise are each
of the following:

Caesar Augustus IPL
by Williams Brothers

Wild Swan, Jaipur X
and Bear State, all by Thornbridge

Hairy Potter by
Staffordshire Brewery

Workie Ticket by
Mordue Brewery

Hop ‘n’ Roll by
Manerba Brewery

Carrie by Kaapse
Brouwers

IPA (Summer 2015)
and DIPA, both by Cloudwater.

That leaves only one
beer to mention, one you could call the overall winning beer of the whole year
because it is the only one that scored 5 out of 5. I don’t know whether I’d
enjoy it that much again, but I can remember even now, sitting out in the
garden on one of the year’s hot days drinking Unmistakably Bill’s pale ale by Caledonian Brewing Company.

Congratulations and
thanks to all the beers that have made my year that much tastier.

I will, just for the
sake of balance, shame the 5 beers that scored only 1 out of 5:

Steam Hopper IPA by
RtwoDtwo

Honey Porter by St
Peter’s Brewey Co.

Boddingtons Bitter
by Boddingtons

Dead Crow Rum
Flavoured Beer by Beverage Brands

Golden Glory by
Badger Ales

You guys, maybe
think about doing better (not you, Badger Ales, I’ve been enjoying most of your
other output), or maybe put it down to your beer not being to my personal
taste. Just take it on board. It’s up to you.

Conclusions

Does that mean this
whole experiment was worthwhile? Well, I’m just going to say yes. It was fun
and got the banter flowing between those of us who took part. I was probably
going to drink a certain amount of beer anyway, though it is hard to say
whether I ultimately drank more than I would have done. Given that I was going
to slow down before the competition started, I probably did end up drinking
more beer than otherwise.

So what now? We
definitely need a new competition to fill the gap, but now that the pressure’s
off, how will our drinking habits change? I’m still determined to try different
beers as much as possible. I quite like that I’ve had all the beers in most
places I go. It means I can say to myself, I’ll
only buy beer today if there’s some I haven’t had already. It will be nice
though, to not feel compelled to go and buy beer when I’m skint and don’t
really want to.

Postcript

Before I leave you
then, let me just finish by saying that we have now hit upon a new contest –
the Christmas Beers Challenge. And
you can read about that… soon.

I’ll be back next
week with a final instalment of what I’m
going to call the Distinct Beers Trilogy,
in which I’ll be discussing the Christmas themed beers and winter ales that
went some way towards inspiring the aforementioned Christmas Beers Challenge. And just in time for Christmas too. So…
see you then.

Definitions

What happens when you zone out after having had a cheeky lunchtime pint.

Alcothusiast:

Not an alcoholic, someone who appreciates booze.

Anxiety, The:

The uneasy feeling that accompanies any noteworthy hangover.

Booze Buffet Mentality:

The propensity people have to go nuts whenever there's a free bar.

Booze Porn:Photos of alcohol.

Bread Chest:Not booze related, but this term describes the indigestion you get from eating too many bread products too quickly. Just putting it out there...

Crawler's Block:The inability to decide where to go next during a pub crawl - often resulting in crawl stagnation and someone saying, "shall we just have another one here?"

Crawl Stagnation:The result of failing to plan a pub crawl sufficiently - lack of a route, theme or over-familiarity with nearby pubs can all be contributing factors.

Excess Induced Alcohol Aversion:An intolerance for a drink caused (usually) by one occasion of overindulgence.

The Family:My whisky collection.

MOMA:

Moment of Maximum Appreciation. Every bottle has one. It's the time you drink it where you enjoy it most.

Old Man Pub:Traditional British pub, renowned for being quiet, cosy and frequented by old men. Much favoured by people who like a nice chat while they drink.Psychological Drinks Cabinet:Collective term relating to the kinds of alcoholic drinks a person has need for.Road Beers:

Cans of beer that you take with you when you go out, to consume on the way.

The 3 Types of Rum:White, gold and dark. Together they form the base of many a great cocktail.

About Me

Neil Cake is interested in all types of booze, but is by no means an authority or expert. Most of the time he's just trying to be funny, but he is learning, and enjoys sharing his adventures and what he learns on the Drink it How You Like it blog.
Thengyuverrymuuuuuch.